[Chazar]

Ok, after reading the manual and seeing that it is explicitely written there that all combat movement precedes all battle evaluations, I tested whether intercepting raiders by scouts works as I described below:

It does, but chances are quite slim:

20 marignon cavalry and 10 crossbows raided, 2 caelian scouts intercepted from the province the raiders attacked and a huge caelian army moved into the square occupied by the raiders.

In about 1/3 of the cases, the 2 scouts battled the marignon raiding party an where slaughtered on the spot where the scouts originated from, hence avoiding the big caelian army. 2/3 simply went without battle, the 2 scouts moving from B->A and marignon from A->B without meeting at the border.

Replacing the scouts by a seraphine accompanied by 20 blizzard warriors changed that: the armies almost always meet, and the battle took equally often place in the raiders orginial province, hence allowing the big caelian army to join the fray.

[ June 09, 2004, 12:24: Message edited by: Chazar ]